Before 24 November, Turkey was described in Russian news reports as a reliable partner in ambitious projects (TurkStream pipeline, construction of Sochi’s Olympic venues), a source of fruits and vegetables in a period of European food embargoes and Crimea blockade, and one of the main tourist destinations, visited annually by over three million Russians.
But after the downing of the Russian fighter jet, Turkey became the target of a new information war. Reports on estimated growth of turnover and perksat Turkish resorts in Russian state-run media were replaced by a long list of accusations.
Dmitry Kiselev, the head of a state international news agency Rossiya Segodnya and the anchorperson of a weekly programme Vesti Nedeli accused Turkey of buying oil from the Islamic State, exporting carcinogenic vegetables to Russia and trying to revive the Ottoman Empire. Vladimir Soloviev, a popular anchorperson on television channel Rossiya 1, labeled Turkey a sponsor of terrorism.
All media platforms, directly or indirectly controlled by the state, were used in the construction of an image of a new enemy. The past was revised by articles, recalling a long history of Russian-Turkish wars and crimes of the Ottoman Empire. The future was programmed by analysing chances in a possible third world war. Coverage of current affairs has become far from unbiased. News selection has been focused on demonstration of Russia’s sanctions effects and Turkey’s internal problems — oppression of journalists, a growth of child marriage and crime.
After weeks under information attack, on 3 December, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu dismissed the allegations by Russian media as “lies of this Soviet-style propaganda machine”.
“In the Cold War period, there was a Soviet propaganda machine. Every day it created different lies. Firstly, they would believe them and then expect the world to believe them. These were remembered as Pravda lies and nonsense,” he said.
Days later the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti proved his point by using a classic Soviet propaganda trick. In an op-ed that called Davutoglu “Reich Minister”, RIA Novosti compared the new enemy to the old by appealing to one of the most loathed images for all Russian people since the WWII – Nazi Germany.
This method, as with many others used against Turkey, has been tested and mastered during the Ukrainian crisis. Maidan activists, who later became a new elite of the country, were also labeled by Russian television channels as “fascist nationalists” and “extremists”. The technology of information war, the main propaganda mouthpieces and the image of the enemy remain the same.
On 7 December, Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) published the results of its survey, saying that 73% of Russian population have changed their attitude to Turkey to the worse since the downing of Su-24.
VTsiom, whose director admitted that the main clients of the center are the Kremlin and the ruling party United Russia, has been criticised for manipulation. The results of the survey are symptomatic. If the data is correct, it demonstrates that anti-Turkey propaganda works very well. If the results were rigged in favour of the Kremlin’s agenda, it shows the desirable goal of the information attack.
The day after, on 8 December, a film crew from Russia’s state television channel Rossiya 1 was detained in the Turkish province of Hatay, close to the Syrian border, and deported from the country because of “violations of regulations of work of foreign journalists in the Turkish Republic”. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation responded with harsh critiques, accusing Turkey of “a series of infringements of the rights of local and foreign journalists”.
However, in a communique by OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media on propaganda in times of conflicts, published last year in reference to a similar case related to the Ukrainian crisis, Dunja Mijatović made it clear that censoring propaganda is not the way to counter it. The best way to neutralise propaganda is balance and accuracy in broadcasting, independence of media regulators, prominence of public service broadcasting with a special mission to include all viewpoints, a clear distinction between fact and opinion in journalism and transparency of media ownership.
A similar view was expressed in a speech by Agnès Callamard, the former executive director of ARTICLE 19, delivered at UN Headquarters in December 2014.
“Hatred needs and is fed by censorship, which, in turn, is needed to nurture incitement to the actual commission of atrocity crimes. The lesson is clear: In our efforts to prevent mass atrocities, the free flow of information and freedom of expression are ultimately are our key allies – not our enemies.”
Documentary It Is Forbidden to Talk in Angola tells the story of the 15 young adults who were accused of planning a rebellion against the government of José Eduardo Dos Santos for taking part in a book club. It is released for the first time with English subtitles by Index in conjunction with Brazil’s award-winning investigative journalists Agencia Publica.
Filmed over 25 days by award-winning journalists Natalia Viana and Eliza Capai from Agencia Publica, It Is Forbidden to Talk in Angola tells the story of the young rappers and activists who are being tried for reading a book by US Nobel Prize nominee Gene Sharp, called From Dictatorship to Democracy, A Conceptual Framework for Liberation.
The activists are facing trial on charges of “preparing acts of rebellion and plotting against the president and state institutions”, which are considered crimes against the security of the Angolan state. If found guilty they could face heavy prison sentences of up to 12 years. Some of the 15 jailed activists were kept in pre-trial detention for 177 days, exceeding the 90 days allowed by Angolan law.
The activists were told on 15 December that they would be sent home and placed under house arrest, according to MakaAngola.org.
Some of the jailed activists went on hunger strike to protest their arrest and detention. Rapper Henrique Luaty Beirão ended his hunger strike on October 27, after 36 days, following requests by his family and friends. He remains in serious condition.
Viana and Capai met several members of Central Angola, a community journalist and activist website whose members have received threats, have been beaten and are constantly surveilled by the security services of the Angolan government. Laurinda Gouveia, a 26-year old philosophy student, told the interviewers how she was beaten with metal bars for two hours in November 2014 for filming a small protest against the government.
“I felt their anger when the police beat me up. They kept saying: ‘You shouldn’t get involved in this, you are a woman, you should think about having a husband and a family… By the way we are beating you up, you will not be able to have babies’,” Gouveia told the journalists.
Following the interview, Gouveia was included in the state prosecutor’s investigation and is now on trial with her colleagues.
Viana and Capai also interviewed rapper Beirão’s family, after which the two journalists were targeted by Angolan authorities. Five days later, while in a public square during an event to mark the president’s birthday, the journalists said they were attacked by two members of the security forces. Disguised as “thieves”, the individuals stole the journalists’ equipment. Shaken, the two sought protection from the Brazilian embassy.
It Is Forbidden to Talk in Angola is a first-hand account of how Dos Santos’ regime works to intimidate anyone who questions his power, and it is released here for the first time with English subtitles.
Agencia Publica is a non-profit investigative journalism organisation that seeks to provide non-partisan reporting in the public interest on Brazilian and Latin American issues.
Femen activists demonstrate in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Berlin. Photo: Florian Schuh/dpa/Alamy Live News
Societies often endanger lives by creating taboos, rather than letting citizens openly discuss stigmas and beliefs. Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley introduces our taboo-themed issue, which looks at no-go subjects worldwide, from abortion and mental health to the Holocaust and homosexuality
Teenager Rahenaz Sayed was told by her family not to sit on a bed, not to touch her hair oil and not to pray during her period.
Sayed, now 20, has started to go into schools in Mumbra, near Mumbai, along with two other young women, to discuss the taboos around menstruation, according to India’s Hindustan Times.
Traditionally, girls here didn’t talk to their mothers about getting their periods, or pain that they might be experiencing. This was something you were not expected to discuss, better, in fact, to pretend that it just wasn’t happening.
These restrictions were not open to challenge, until now. “We thought, ‘Why not talk of an issue which women don’t speak about and suffer silently?’ We suffered due to silences surrounding menstruation and didn’t want others to go through the same,” Mubhashirin Naik, one of the women starting to go into schools to talk about these long-held practices, told the newspaper.
They had been told that these “rules” came from the scriptures, but when they read those same passages themselves they found that while they spoke about women resting during menstruation nothing was written about banning them from prayer.
Taboos, subjects that are off limits to argument, are different in every country around the world. But this story shows why the act of not allowing a group of people to discuss a tradition or convention can injure society. Why should girls be treated like outcasts once a month and banned from doing the most normal things in life? The answer is because somehow this has become accepted and challenges frowned upon.
Once these three young women began to see that the structures they were being told to follow were nonsensical (they were not able to ask for painkillers, for instance), they had the strength to stand up against them. And by doing so, they will have begun to change the dynamic. No doubt, other women will also be encouraged to question the “rules”. And that’s how societies adapt over time, by questioning power.
In El Salvador, where abortion is illegal under any circumstance, even where the pregnant woman could die, the way that the law is enforced means that women who suffer a miscarriage can wake up with a police officer standing next to them.
The abortion law is so draconian that women who lose their baby through illness can find themselves charged with man- slaughter. Under the ferocity of this law, many women are too frightened to talk to anyone about any concerns they might have about pregnancy, let alone discuss abortion (more on this in the latest issue). In 2008 a 25-year-old woman, Guadalope Vásquez, was sentenced under the abortion law to a 30-year sentence after suffering a miscarriage. Under these conditions, women are often too frightened to discuss anything about health complications during their pregnancy with a doctor, or anyone else. Lives will be put at risk.
Throughout history, taboos have been established to limit and control society, and help to retain a status quo. “Best not mention it” is the nodded instruction to put something off limits in the family living room. In the 20th century, in the UK, societal disapproval would be rained down on those who ate something other than fish on Fridays, or children who played outside on a Sunday, or an adult who didn’t wear a hat to church. And in the US today the Westboro Baptist Church tells its female followers that it is forbidden for them to cut their hair. But why? Who decided these were the rules, and how do they change?
Sometimes it takes a generational shift, such as we have seen in Ireland, with the 62% vote to change the law to allow same-sex marriage. There’s a tipping point when a body of resistance builds up to such a point that the dam breaks and the public suddenly demands another way is found, and an older way is discarded.
But societal disapproval can be fierce and individuals who deviate from “the normal” can also find themselves isolated and alone, as Palestinian academic Mohammed Dajani Daoudi discovered when he took a group of his students to Auschwitz to learn about the Holocaust (read his story in the magazine). Dajani felt it was important for his university students to learn about this period of history. He saw his duty as one of teaching about,
not ignoring, a particular piece of history. Others saw it as the action of a traitor, accusing him of ignoring the suffering of Palestinians. He knew he was tackling a taboo subject, but hadn’t expected the reaction to the visit to be so violent. Afterwards he received death threats, and has now moved his family to Washington DC, partly for safety reasons.
Societies often endanger lives by creating taboos, rather than letting citizens openly discuss stigmas and beliefs. Remember the days when people would fear being judged for admitting they had cancer and would not mention it in public? Alastair Campbell does, and draws parallels to attitudes to mental illness today. Such beliefs can lead to people failing to talk to doctors about symptoms because of embarrassment, and potentially leaving diagnosis too late. These societal barriers are often out-of-date, sometimes stemming from archaic religious beliefs, or from traditions that have been left unchallenged. But still today an action that conflicts with expected behaviour can result in damage to an individual. The Encyclopedia Britannica states: “Generally, the prohibition that is inherent in a taboo includes the idea that its breach or defiance will be followed by some kind of trouble to the offender, such as lack of success in hunting or fishing, sickness, miscarriage, or death.” Living in fear of breaching such a “rule” can leave people afraid to dispute or argue for a sensible alternative.
To challenge a famous phrase from a WWI poster, talk doesn’t cost lives, but not talking certainly can.
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No, wait, don’t. He’s heavyweight champion of the world and doesn’t seem particularly bothered what you or I think. He was born to box and is now at the top of his game, even if it is a game that has become less and less interesting, compelling and competitive in the last two decades.
Anyone who watched Fury beat Wladimir Klitschko on 28 November will struggle to remember anything about the fight. My word it was dull. Heavyweight boxing can be lumbering at the best of times, but this was beyond pedestrian. “Attritional” suggests a ferocity of combat that was entirely absent.
Nonetheless, Fury won, fairly and squarely. His uncle/trainer Peter Fury laughably compared the underdog victory to Muhammad Ali’s victory over Sonny Liston in 1964, proving, if nothing else, that boxing’s reference points are remarkably limited.
As a British world heavyweight champion, it is only to be expected that Fury should be nominated for the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year Award. The problem is that Fury’s personality, or more exactly his opinions, ain’t exactly national hero standard. Fury claims that the apparent triumvirate of homosexuality, paedophilia and abortion will lead to the imminent apocalypse. This information, he says, is written in the Bible (where, exactly, remains unclear).
He also says the place of a woman is in the kitchen and on her back. He has offended many by suggesting that genuine national sporting hero, Jessica Ennis Hill, “looks fit in a dress”. This is obviously true in all senses but is the exact kind of objectification that has demeaned women’s sports for years, from Sepp Blatter’s suggestion that women footballers should wear tighter shorts to the annual drooling over women at Wimbledon.
Fury has faced criticism for all these views and come out, well, fighting. He has described the tens of thousands who have signed a petition calling for him to be dropped from Sports Personality of the Year as “wankers” and said his rivals in the competition have no personality to speak of.
This last comment reveals how the BBC is hoist by its own petard. Sports Personality Of The Year is a curious competition: the demands that the British public make of sportspeople make the Vatican’s canonisation processes seem a doddle. For years, Andy Murray, the greatest male tennis player the UK has produced since the 1930s, was criticised for not smiling enough. Sportspeople are simultaneously criticised for being pampered children and for speaking their minds. SPOTY’s name suggests it rewards not only accomplishment but also character. British sport and the BBC still retain the Corinthian ideals of the public school playing fields.
But in spite of the best efforts of Michael Gove while he was education secretary, character and personality mean different things now. Think of everyone you’ve ever met who has been described as a “character” or a “real personality”. Think of every person you’ve met who defends their crass emissions with the phrase “I’m a really honest person”.
Tyson Fury is all those people times one hundred and with fists the size of sledgehammers. He’s Dapper Laughs with a world title. This for him is character and personality.
Peter Fury’s post-fight allusion to Muhammad Ali was entirely deliberate but entirely wrong. When some people see Ali, they see a loudmouth being praised for being a loudmouth. Loudmouths have been part of boxing for a long time, with fight build ups frequently resembling melodramatic soap operas.
Ali was certainly a loudmouth, but he was also a sharp mind and a supremely talented boxer: he could back up the patter. Moreover, his schtick was tied to a new, confident assertion of black identity during the civil rights movement.
This is the small tragedy of Tyson Fury: the self-styled “Gipsy King” is a member of the last minority on these islands who have no one to speak for them. He is the product of a settled Traveller family. In a world where the best this community can expect in mainstream representation is the prurient gawping of Channel 4’s “My Big Fat Gipsy Wedding”, it would be nice for Travellers to have a positive role model. Speaking on Radio 5 Live, Josie O’Driscoll, a volunteer with the Traveller Movement, suggested that if Fury wants to be King of the Travellers then he should “get down off his throne” and talk to LGBT Travellers.
In an ideal world, maybe: but this carries its own problems. In the civil rights era of Ali, this was addressed with reference to Sidney Poitier’s character in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, the story of a white middle-class girl bringing her African-American boyfriend to meet her conservative parents. Poitier’s character was perfect: charming, professional, erudite, intelligent… inadvertently, and through no fault of Poitier’s, the message was that if a black man in a white society was in every other sense unobjectionable, then he might be accepted. The rise of the raucous, sexy, gun-toting ghetto heroes of the Blaxploitation era was in part a reaction to the rigidity of the upright, virtuous black characters in well-meaning films of the early 60s, cast as an unapologetic blackness.
So is it entirely fair on anyone to force Fury into the position of role model, whether for the Traveller community or the British people at large? It doesn’t seem to be a position he embraces himself. Far from it, he clearly sees his uglier views as part of his schtick. As with Katie Hopkins, or Donald Trump, there’s only so far the “controversial” routine can take you.
Sports fans play our part in encouraging the drama, the schtick, the anger and the rage, and boxing fans more than most. Only the most ferocious dullard would demand that sports coverage and sports talk should be confined to what happens on the pitch or in the ring. But sports fans are also essentially fickle: we enjoy the controversy until we don’t. And then we take our ball home.
This is the essential dilemma at the heart of our obsession with sport: we imagine sporting endeavour as something sublime, and imagine that the gifted athlete must also be pure in thought and deed. We may need to grow up and stop searching for heroes, but try telling the ancient Greeks that. We’ve had thousands of years to get over that particular need and show no signs of doing so. But we could, at least, learn that we won’t make boxing, Tyson Fury or the lives of LGBT people any better by insisting the heavyweight be silenced.
